


A Fox In The Henhouse

by JustAHumanMachine



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:15:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25118989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAHumanMachine/pseuds/JustAHumanMachine
Summary: A general watches at a banquet, watches a kingdom uneasy and a new king unready. They have every right to be uneasy - trouble is brewing just outside their door. But for now, everything is calm.(Just a quick scene that popped into my head and I decided to write it out.)
Kudos: 1





	A Fox In The Henhouse

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick little writing exercise, I had a scene pop into my head the other day and this happened. Deals with some of my original characters, might write more with them later (particularly Felix and Octavian I have so many cute scenes with them in my head that don’t fit in the context of the narrative)

Despite the king’s best efforts, the room was cold as ice. Sure, the evening moved as it would have under the queen’s reign, but the sense of warmth and levity Jahanara had carried with her even as she ruled with an iron grip? That was gone. Hadassah glanced over the table at Rioghnan, who was wandering through the scattered crowd of guests and talking to his guests just as his mother had done, but with a stilted turn of phrase and icy demeanor. The young king had always been a serious man, and the death of his mother had hit him harder than he would admit. Hadassah gave him a nervous look - the king was worried about something, aggressively picking at his food, almost unaware of his surroundings as the slightest twitches in his hands betrayed some unknown fear. He was a good ruler, to be sure, but grief had left him hollow, and the king barely managed to hold back disdain for the nobles groveling before him with two-faced platitudes of comfort.

Speaking of groveling... Hadassah listened for a second, then sighed as the telltale sound of Demeter’s voice reached her from across the room. The words were mostly muddled, but from the pathetic tone of his voice she could tell he was whining about that doctor, Virgil something or other, she didn’t care. Love him or hate him, that physician had done a lot of good through the years, revolutionary ideas or not, and the sound of Demeter’s voice as he ranted about this petty rivalry made Hadassah want to slap him. In fact, she found herself crossing the room for that very purpose before she even realized what she was doing.

Fortunately for Demeter’s face and Hadassah’s chances of not being arrested, by the time she reached him he had calmed down and moved on to other matters, regaining the dignity that befitted his position as the High Priest. The man was devout and normally quite calm, an excellent fit for the position, if only he had a better understanding of power. Hadassah had spent her life learning power, and one thing she knew was that it was never static, and flowed from place to place, person to person, like a river that never stopped shifting. Demeter was talking about some girl he thought was a demon. Red hair, he was saying, it’s the red hair, she can’t be trusted, Hadassah was considering punching him.

She was about to violently end his endless stream of words when the large door to the hall slowly creaked open. The room, buzzing with conversation, fell silent as the door was pushed open just a crack, then snapped closed again. Hadassah sighed and headed to the door, a large oaken piece of craftmanship thirty feet high. She could see why they’d struggle to open it. Search the wall, she found the switch and pulled, the door slowly swinging open as the crowd muttered, peeking around each other for a look at the door.

A pair of guests awkwardly made their way into the grand hall. They were late. Hadassah despised lateness, almost as much as she despised disorder, and they were certainly disorderly, fidgeting with the suits they wore in a way that showed they weren’t used to formal attire. But she found that... she didn’t really mind. She was more curious than upset. These two didn’t seem to fit in the room, seeming almost alien, as if they belinged to a different world and were merely paying their reality a visit. 

“Uh, hello!” The taller man said with a chuckle. “Sorry about the late arrival, we, uh... we got lost.” He blushed, and a low chuckle rose from the room. Hadassah felt herself unwinding. The duo, know it or not, had brought back that familiar sense of warmth from Jahanara’s reign, melting the frozen feeling of the room with their very introduction.

The taller of the two certainly drew attention, with a deep tint to his skin and scruffy brown beard, he was certainly attractive, even if he struggled to keep the soldier’s uniform he wore in any decent order. Most of the girls and quite a few of the guys present would have swarmed him if he wasn’t pouring all his affection into the smaller man beside him, the one who caught more of Hadassah’s attention. On first glance, she wondered if he was an adult, his small stature and the childlike chubbiness of his face certainly gave room for doubt, but on closer inspection she could see gray strands hidden in his red hair and a tired look in his eyes that said he was much older and wiser than they would think. He reminded Hadassah of... something. She couldn’t think of what. That was going to drive her crazy, wasn’t it.

Odd as they were, their arrival seemed to fill the king with joy, and the duo made a beeline for Rioghnan. The taller of the two - a low ranking officer, Hadassah realized, odd choice for this event - apologized over and over again to the king. To her surprise, the king - the stoic, serious, take no nonsense King Rioghnan - happily brushed off their worries, seeming excited to meet these two... nobodies, it seemed cruel to call them that, but it was true. Unless that recognition she struggled to put a finger on as she examined the smaller man proved to be that he was some great hero or warrior, there was no reason the king would be this happy - no, it wasn’t joy, Hadassah realized. It was relief.

As the party returned to normal, now with the addition of two warm and jovial guests, Hadassah reluctantly made her way back to Demeter. He was muttering under his breath, more stuff about witches, calling their new guests unholy - Hadassah was going to kill him one day, she just knew it - before she snapped him out of it and began to question him on their new arrivals. Despite his muttered insults and protests, he was familiar with their visitors. “Oh, them. The loud one,” he said, pointing to the larger man, who seemed to be trying to get drunk as quickly as possible and was singing off-key ballads in a language Hadassah didn’t recognize, “is Octavian, and the decent one - where’d he go? Oh, there he is, quiet fellow - is Felix.” Demeter let a small smile form on his face, which shocked Hadassah. Getting a glimmer of approval from him was a monumental feat.

The night wore on, and Hadassah found herself feeling more and more at home. Her nerves had been on edge for months, ever since it was clear the queen’s illness would kill her, and she didn’t quite trust Rioghnan to live up to her golden age. He’d been locked away for weeks, burying his grief in work and setting order to the land. He had heard the rumors of war, of an uprising in the north, of an odd plague the doctors had never seen before, of a warrior the people had named their hero, someone who had more power than they knew. She’d been worried about that. But now, be it the warmth of the party or that this drink had more alcohol than she expected, Hadassah began to feel like things would be okay. Rioghnan was a good ruler, and with all these advisors, these people of great wisdom and courage, perhaps the golden reign of the queen would continue.

“Hey, Felix!” That was Octavian again, loud enough to break through the hum of voices without really trying, loud enough that Hadassah didn’t consider it eavesdropping to listen it. The strange soldier stumbled across the room to his companion, barely staying upright as he supported himself on the quiet man, who seemed to be hiding from the bright and loud atmosphere of the party. “Listen, love, you’ve got to have some fun!”

“I’d rather not get mind-numbingly drunk,” Felix said in a quiet voice, but he still let Octavian practically drag him toward the center of the room. The duo nearly crashed into a mostly full table where Rioghnan and Demeter were speaking to the rest of the group.

“Got room for two more?” Octavian said, flinging himself into a chair without waiting for an answer. As Demeter tried to stammer out a disgusted reply, Rioghnan gestured for him to be silent.

“It’s a pleasure to have you here, sirs.” Rioghnan was doing his best to be friendly. “I congratulate you two on your marriage, not often I see couples who don’t despise each other.”

There were quite a few couples sitting around them, and while they didn’t seem amused, Felix began to chuckle. One woman, Hadassah knew her as “the magenta stuck up” from Demeter’s ramblings, gave the two of them a look of disdain. “And who, exactly, are you two?”

“I’m Octavian, I’m, uh...” It was clear the drinking had taken a toll on the man. “I’ve been helping with fighting and such, planning, strategy...” He sleepily leaned onto the smaller man. “Have I mentioned that I love you?” He said in a loose, sloppy tone of voice.

“And I’m Felix.” He smiled just a bit as he tried to get Octavian to sit upright. “I’m just a writer, I suppose.”

“That’s not what I meant,” the lady continued with a forced smile, the heavy makeup making it look as if her face was cracking apart. “Who are your families? What are their titles?”

The duo stopped, thought, froze in confusion. That wasn’t a question they expected to be asked. Sensing trouble on the rise, Hadassah emptied her drink and slowly drifted toward the table. “We don’t really have titles,” Octavian muttered. “Not where we come from, anyway...”

“Where you come from?” A man with round glasses asked in a suspicious, biting tone. “Where, exactly, is that? Do you come from a place so uncivilized that you don’t have basic structure?”

“We’ve got structure!” Octavian yelled, his drunken demeanor not helping his case.

The lady chuckled as Rioghnan glared at the man. “There’s no cause for being petty and rude.”

“Oh, he has a point, your Majesty,” the lady replied. “Forgive me, but I must ask, why did you invite these two? They don’t seem able to explain their own importance.”

“They are powerful and wise men,” the king replied, but it was clear that the rest of the table didn’t believe him. It was odd, Hadassah thought, to see such a clear slip in his power. Her worries began to return. “The two of them have done a great deal to assist our land in the plague and the war, and they have more than enough heart to prove excellent allies.” Rioghnan gave Felix an odd, cautious look, and Hadassah realized he was carefully watching his hands, flinching everytime they drew close to someone’s food or drink. “Even if they are technically outside our systems.”

“These are excellent allies?” The man laughed. “A drunken boxer and some neurotic whore? You could find better help in-“

Octavian punched him. The lady with the painted face screamed and fainted. “Don’t talk like that about him,” he growled, rage practically glowing from him, like a dragon’s breath barely held within its head.

The man’s nose was bleeding and his glasses were askew as he pulled himself to his feet. “The guards! Guards, there’s a maniac-“

In a movement impossibly quick, Felix grabbed the man by the shoulders and pushed him back into his chair. “Don’t worry, no need to panic,” Felix said, his voice soothing and almost melodic as he drew the group back into their seats, dissolving the frantic atmosphere. It was almost unnerving how quickly he calmed them down as he sat beside Octavian, holding his hand in a firm grip. “It’s fine, he’s not badly hurt. If Tavi meant any real harm, he’d have kept swinging. Besides, any honorable man would have acted the same way.”

Hadassah watched with a keen eye, her hand still on the hilt of her sword. The small man had an almost hypnotic effect on the other guests, his quiet and gentle nature mixed with a clear intelligence. Having him on their side would be good, although it still haunted her how she couldn’t place that familiar air around him.

Then something odd happened, although only Hadassah found it suspect. The air still heavy with fighting words, Felix began to explain some of his home’s history, speaking of some great revolution in a nearby country, where centuries ago people had overturned the nobles but landed in a bloody coup. He seemed to pull them into a trance, speaking like everything was at once a joke and a great secret, and Hadassah noticed a change slowly but surely come over him, turning him from the timid and nervous man with a quiet voice into a calm but powerful leader, an air of command radiating from him as the small man spoke, his voice conveying such power and knowledge that no one dared to interrupt.

Then as he continued, his speech turned from history to theory, and with his words still peppered with a chuckle, he began to criticize the kingdom and its systems. Despite how angry and uptight she knew them to be, no one lashed out when Felix, still grinning and speaking like he was telling some grand joke, told the nobles to their faces how dumb it was that their parentage had gotten them into this hall when there were dozens of people who were there by merit. None of the nobles really responded, they were in a dreamlike state of calm, but Hadassah saw an ever so slight shift in the others - military men, scientists, some of the priests - as they listened, and Hadassah could tell they agreed. Whether they had all this time or Felix had convinced them in a second, that wasn’t good. Her hand tightened on the blade as she took a few steps closer - curse those drinks, she could feel her feet stumbling - and glanced at the king. Their guest was a harmless philosopher, she thought, he can’t be a threat.

Rioghnan was a clever and a suspicious man. His position required it. So he’d kept himself on guard as Felix had spoken, refusing to let his air of camaraderie lure him in. “That’s an excellent point,” Rioghnan said with a tone cold and sharp as the blade of the sword he gripped under the table. “But I’ll remind you that lesser houses often fall into dishonor and decay. It’s nature’s way of removing the incompetent. After all, your family were used to be nobles, Mister Fengari. Why don’t you tell us about that?”

It was a subtle statement, a question asked in a steely tone of voice, but Hadassah knew it was an attack. Felix did too, something about his questions taking the wind from his sails. The air of authority was gone and the spell was broken, and the quiet man shifted back into his seat as conversation resumed.

Hadassah had spent a long time studying power, watching how it flowed, always moving, never frozen. The king’s statement had done its job - he’d taken back the power he lost while Felix was talking. But it was unnerving to see the king have to scramble to regain power, to see him resort to a personal attack to get control over something like this. Even then, his action hadn’t quite succeeded - the nobles were back to sucking up, of course, but everyone else seemed sharper than ever as they left that dreamlike state, and a few of them muttered under their breath about their ruler. Hadassah was worried. If this is what happened for some bookworm with a gentle demeanor, what about someone truly confrontational? 

“Oh, hello, Hadassah.” Rioghnan’s voice, tinted with the same nervousness she felt, snapped through her thoughts. “I’ve barely seen you all evening. Have a seat.”

The only chair open was next to Felix, and while Hadassah doubted the man would do anything to harm her - she realized Rioghnan was still carefully watching everyone’s drinks - it still felt weird. As she nervously slid into her seat, the little philosopher said, “So, Hadassah?” In a voice more subdued than he’d been speaking a moment prior. “What’s with everyone’s names here?”

“I don’t see what you mean.” Hadassah gave him an odd look, and Felix turned to her with a small, nervous smile. It was the first time she’d actually made eye contact with the man, and as someone who’d made a habit of reading people’s eyes - that whole “windows to the soul” thing was as true as it could be - she was surprised. He seemed tired, the look in his eyes seeming ancient and done with it all, but there was a light in there too, a sharp flicker veiled by the sense of exhaustion, some brilliance always moving, always searching, a glimmer of cunning and hope that years of misfortune had failed to stomp out.

And just like that, Hadassah realized what he reminded her of. It was a simple memory, from when she was a small child, messing around in the bushes when she found a baby fox. It was badly injured, a massive bite mark on its leg, and had whimpered with pain when she had softly picked it up and rushed it to her parents. She had begged them to do something, anything for the poor thing, it was just a baby, couldn’t someone do something? Despite her pleas, her father had refused outright. So, being stubborn and stupid and a very small child, she’d decided to take care of the fox herself, and to do that, she’d hidden it in the henhouse. Slowly but surely, over the course of a few weeks she’d nursed the little thing back to health, and it gave her such joy to see the fox doing well, even among the chickens it would normally have hunted.

She’d awoken in the night to the sound of crashes and screams. She remembered racing toward the sound, only to realize it was coming from the henhouse, and she remembered bursting through the door to see her father trying to kill the fox. They were surrounded by the bloody corpses of chickens, her father was holding a long knife as her mother tried to keep her from getting outside, and the little fox was stumbling around, attacking everything in sight, white foam bubbling out of its mouth. It would be years later when Hadassah learned what rabies was and how it affected an animal’s behavior, turning something - or someone, she shuddered - from kind and harmless to a predator that seeks nothing but to destroy. She didn’t know about that then. All she knew was that the little fox, harmless as it seemed, harmless as she wanted to believe, was dangerous. That night was the first time she killed something. And although Hadassah doubted the man beside her was rabid, she could tell he was just as harmless in appearance and just as dangerous, even if he didn’t know it.

That memory of a fox drew her mind to a much more recent time. Hadassah spent a lot of time wandering through the cities, talking to people, getting her mind around their various situations. Among the usual things, she’d heard rumors of a warrior, a savior, some people called him. At first it was just a rumor spread by a drunk at a rundown bar, yelling about how a man armed with nothing but his wits had come from the cold winter of the north and broken a city’s siege. Then the rumors came in more force, in more numbers, and the tales about him seemed to blur the line between truth and legend. The people called him the Fox of the North, some saying the name came from his red hair, others from his quiet cunning, and others still from the fact that he took orders from no one, appearing to do some great deed and vanish like a ghost into the night. But he wasn’t a ghost. He was sitting right next to her. It had to be Felix, Hadassah knew it. He was a kind man, from what she’d heard, but with a sharp mind and wise beyond his years, he inspired them with a quiet voice and calm pleas to reason and morality. This was him, sitting right next to her. It had to be. She’d thought the rumors were exaggerations, but now she knew they just how true they were. It would only take a word, and the people, desperate and with a cause to believe in, would follow him to rebellion in a heartbeat. Hadassah had lived through rebellion, and it made her shiver to think about the land turning against itself again.

She glanced to the king, watching him with a calculating eye, and suddenly she understood why he was here. Their little philosopher answered to no one, he was dangerous, but he would make a great ally. There had been rumors of war with the north, and a man bound more to his morals than the state, one of his influence and power, could cripple the land if he stood against it. Rioghnan had invited him, and he had arrived. Felix had shown the king some favor, and in the king’s mind, that could win him support from the people, harness the power of this revolutionary, and give their land a powerful mind for strategy. But he was a loose cannon, and as long as he was in these halls, it would take a firm hand to control him. Hadassah knew Felix would not be allowed to leave, a practical prisoner in the palace. And there was a glimmer of resentment in Felix’s eyes as he looked around the table, a glimmer that said he wouldn’t keep his thoughts under wraps, even if he had to go toe to toe with the king himself. In fact, if he wanted to hurt anyone, he didn’t have to get past those towering walls anymore...

Hadassah cursed herself for opening that great door. She’d let a fox into the henhouse.


End file.
